* * *

Sam was standing at the basement level of the NYPD precinct, kicking and beating the vending machine with his fists, when he saw Kerry looking at him out of the corner of his eye with something between a smile and a hang-jawed expression. He proceeded to shake the machine even harder, and added primal screaming to the mix in hopes of upping his strength to the heights needed for the task of getting the bag of tortilla chips to drop.  

"Your body's a temple, Sam, not a landfill. Why don't you come over here and share my lunch with me?" 

"Well, only because that hints of future rendezvous and sharing of things still more personal." 

She stifled a smile and started unfolding her electric blue flexible-material lunch box that was part cooler.  

"Sushi? Really?" he said, eying the contents in the lunch box. I thought for sure you had an exemption clause in there for yourself when you put everyone in the office on the stuff. 

"So, how are we coming with winnowing down the list of prospective safe houses?" 

Sam sighed and took his seat next to her, and stuffed his mouth with sushi, just so he didn't have to answer her right away. Maybe he could use the extra time to construct some whiny excuses that seemed halfway defensible.  

"Quit stalling, Sam." 

"Quit calling me on my shit. You're making me feel like a teenager again." Finally his mouth was clear enough to spit out something even more foul smelling than the sushi. "Nationwide... you know how many rich people have social causes they champion? The top one percent knows how to cover their asses with good causes, I'll say that much. They're far better at mitigating the hate, loathing, and jealousy for what they have than you are."  

"Maybe I can help you winnow down the list." 

As he choked on his sushi, forcing it to go down, he reached for her bottle of pink vitamin-colored water, and tried to restore breathing to his trachea with it. He ended up leaving a pool of floating particles in her bottle which grossed even him out. "Sorry about that." 

She smirked with admirable open-mindedness and control of her own gag reflexes. Sam figured he would reward her with the truth. He was about to hit her with the lists of hundreds of homes, each of which had a sale contingency based on donating some or all of the proceeds from the home purchase to one or another charitable causes; either the buyer had to agree, or the seller, or both. But then he eyed her daintily eating her sushi with chopsticks as if she couldn't get enough of it, and only an outmoded sense of feminine propriety forestalled her shoving it in her mouth faster than she could chew. "Maybe you can help me winnow the list down at that," he said. "In fact, I think you just did. There's one property that just moved to the top of my list. A home at the top of a mountain made of stone and wood, sale price two million even." 

"Why that one?" 

"The seller insists the entire two million will go to Save the Whales, a Greenpeace fund." 

"I didn't know that was on the list of her social causes." 

"I didn't either, until now." 

"What triggered the insight?" 

"You and your sushi. You still haven't made the connection, have you?" 

She stared at him wide-eyed and clueless.  

"That night in the restaurant, with Zinio and Delaney, I mean 'the couple,' when you laughed your ass off at him reeling a shark out of the display tank." 

"How do you...?" 

Sam waved her off dismissively. "Dead Man Walking couldn't bring himself to shove it in your face, but that didn't stop him from making you the laughing stock with the rest of the department, which served his purposes just fine, adding to all the snickering going on behind your back." 

"I still don't the connection, Sam?" 

"Don't you? The reason you love sushi more than anything else is because of that night, still trying to capture that same aura of romance, trying to douse yourself in it so it's part of the air you breathe. That night changed your life more than any other because of how well it illuminated the hollow cavity at the center of your soul no one could fill." 

She lowered her eyes and lowered the sushi dish, putting down the chopsticks as well. She wiped her mouth with the paper napkin from the lunch box cooler. "That's pretty good, Sam. Even I didn't see that. But I'm still not seeing... Oh my God. That's the reason she turned her nose up at the Sushi. It was whale meat." 

Sam nodded. "I'll have to run a check to be sure. But yeah, that's my guess." 

"Don't bother running the check. I'm guessing Dead Man Walking did already. And I'm guessing that's why he refrained from rubbing the footage in my face, which might have gotten me checking into what she ordered that night. It also explains why he circulated the video to everyone else in the department. So when I had to turn to him for the whereabouts of the actual safe house, everyone in the department would know that I had the answer in my possession all along, and was too dumb to know it." 

"The man is deliciously evil, like a fine full-bodied cabernet sauvignon years in the making." 

"I'm surprised he didn't try to erase any electronic traces of the sale of the house." 

"Oh, he did. I haven't been playing around with my cell phone because I got tired of looking at you." He saw her smile out of the corner of his eye, which pleased him. "I'm able to bring up every house but that one." 

"How did you get on to the list of possible candidates in the first place? The details of many of those sales are not a matter of public record. That would take an analyst of DMW's caliber to put together. Unless..." 

"You got it." 

"Carter." She smiled. 

"He figured he could see past DMW's privacy screen if he just ascertained the right over-the-shoulder angle with a monocular zoom disguised to look like the one jewelers use and a mirror, pretending to be studying evidence up close rather than snooping from a distance." 

"He wasn't kidding about being a first class weasel." She picked up her sushi tray again and her chopsticks, took another bite. "There's something else I want you to do for me." 

* * *

Kerry read the label, shook her head, and threw the protein drink on the floor. Sam, walking the aisle behind her, smiling, picked it up and put it back on the grocery store shelf. That was the third item she'd chucked so far. "I can't find anything in this store that won't kill you. You may as well eat rat poison; that'll do the job just a little bit faster."  

Sam took the next item out of her hands, a Kool-Aid container, before she could read the back of that. "I'm frightened to think what you'll do with that." And he substituted it for a bottle of Evian. Kerry accepted it with a sigh of resignation. "I read about this nun once in France who lived on nothing but air and water. A film crew followed her around for three months to confirm. You think I can do that?" 

Sam smirked; it was easier than smiling and showing his teeth, which he wasn't sure he'd brushed that morning. "You know, you're a lot like her, like Delaney, I mean." 

"What did I tell you about names, Sam?" 

"Hell, you're a lot like both of them actually, just the perfect mix of both. I think that says something." 

"Like what?" Kerry was still reading labels, though more for her own amusement at this point. She had to stifle a laugh by putting a hand to her mouth. "I think you can use this one to blow up a house." 

Sam took the Wacko-Juice can out of her hand and put it back on the shelf. "You burn patchouli candles at home, don't you?" 

She interrupted her crime investigation of the grocery store items long enough to glare at him. "How did you know that?" 

"And you mist your house plants with some type of liquid fertilizer I can't quite put my hands on without making a special trip to Lowe's, but I can tell you it has heaps of phosphorous in it." 

"You're turning into a half-decent investigator, Sam. Though I fear we're both wasting our talents. This place and the thousands like it are a far bigger crime in progress than anything I've looked into." 

He put his hand on hers to arrest the retrieval of the next item of boxed cereal from the shelf. He didn't know if they'd make it to the end of this aisle without her shooting somebody. "I also know you like a lot of garlic on your food. You know how I know these things? Because each day you sweat a little bit more of your past out of you. This entire case, since you stopped showering and eating, has become your personal Hopi Indian sweat lodge, purifying you of all that you are. Just like the crocheting was meant to carve out more space in your mind away from your obsessions, your focus on this couple has allowed you to take your self-hate to a whole new level." 

"I thought we were agreed I was pretty full of myself." 

"No, that's just what everyone else thinks. They don't know you as well as I do, as well as I've come to know you." 

"I'm still waiting for the punch line, Sam." He had her full attention now, for the first time in a while. 

"I mean are you trying to catch these guys and put them away because of what they're doing, or because you can't stand yourself and anything that reminds you of you? Who are we chasing down here, exactly?" 

"It's just another case, Sam," she said, lowering her eyes, and heading down the aisle. Sam got the distinct impression this time that it was to get away from him. 

He stopped her in the cosmetics aisle, grabbed a brush off the shelf, and did her hair for her. "I'm betting with a little more self-love, you'll find this case is entirely beneath you. They may be America's Most Wanted to that banker. I just don't think anyone else gives a shit. They have a bigger following than the President who endorses this FBI campaign of terror on a misguided couple trying to right the wrongs of the world, wrongs we all can pretty much agree on." She was still trying to get away from him, so he used that fact to progress down the cosmetics aisle, dropping the brush in his hand basket. This time, when he grabbed her arm and turned her around, he started in with the face makeup pulled off the rack. 

Kerry got a look at herself in the mirror. "Hey, you're pretty good at this." 

"My wife has Parkinson's. Her hands aren't steady enough to do her own makeup anymore." 

Kerry smiled warmly at him. "You're a good man, Sam." 

Finished touching up her foundation, he moved on to doing her cheeks, and dropped the other makeup item in his basket. "You put on a good act, alright, about how the envy of others doesn't get to you. And you forgive people like DMW who have my vote for a true America's Most Wanted. I'm frightened to see what that guy has in his fridge. Probably been eating human brains to try and restore color to his cheeks for years." 

Kerry bit her lip as Sam dropped the rest of the rouge in his basket and moved on to the eyeliner, and her eyes teared up a little. "I suspect you're right about DMW. I've suspected as much all along. I guess that supports your theory about the cases that actually get my attention; it's certainly not based on merit." 

She sighed and lowered her eyes again. Making it harder for him to do her eye liner. He had to go from memory now as to the exact color of her eyes. "I suppose if I wasn't so hopeless..." she said. 

Sam sighed and dropped the eye-liner in the basket. They moved past the face paint section. She seemed to be cooperating more with the makeover now. When they got to the hairsprays he did his best to lock in his handiwork from earlier, then dropped the can of spray in his basket. "Maybe I was wrong. Maybe in an effort to prove how brilliant I was, I missed the most salient point of why you're drawn to this case." 

She looked back at him hopefully, which gave him a chance to douse her with the Rene-body spray. He walked around her like he was fumigating a house for roaches. He had them both coughing, which was his cue to relent with the Rene. He dropped that in the basket as well. "Well, you're going to leave me standing here in suspense?" she said, "dying in my own personal Auschwitz?" She continued coughing from the deadly gas probably not meant to be inhaled even by industrial scrubbers. 

"Maybe, just maybe, you hit bottom with these two. And the things that you hated in yourself-which had drawn the most torment from others over the years-were the things you started to love about yourself again. The things you felt you most had to hold on to, so much so, you could afford to let everything else go."  

"That's good, Sam. I always suspected shrinks would make excellent detectives, just for their keen insights into the human dimension. I suppose I could stand to be stronger in that department. We make a good team, you and I." 

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking." He squeezed both her upper arms, and leaned in and kissed her. 

She laughed. "I'm sorry, the dutiful wife sitting at home with Parkinson's just kills the whole romance idea for me." 

"I just thought you'd need to hold on to something to hate about yourself a while longer. To avoid relapsing more thoroughly." 

She tried to stifle her giggling and her tears again. "Oh, that's good. That might work. And what about you? You decided the self-hate game is just too pitiful to do solo; misery needs company, is that it?" 

"We all need a reason to hate ourselves, otherwise what's the point of Church on Sundays? We just don't need to take it to pathological heights." 

"Duly noted, Sam. And if I stray from the comeback trail again, you be sure to tell me." 

She marched her bottle of Evian up to the cashier. He noticed she picked the longer of the lines. He decided to give her some space so they could both process what just happened between them, and headed instead for the express checkout. Moments later he had the makeup items paid for, and he headed out the store ahead of her with the shopping bag in hand. 

Standing in the second of the two aisles of the Shop-And-Go mini-mart, Ms. Pierce lingered to purchase the Evian for herself. The line had been held up by the folks standing in front of her and the cashier-all a little preoccupied with the sight of the very intimidating armed black helicopter beyond the windows of the grocery store. 

Kerry snapped her fingers in front of the clerk's face to get his attention off the helicopter and back on ringing up the purchases. Recalling her from when she climbed out of the helicopter earlier and sauntered into the store, the clerk's fear of her temporarily overrode his fear of the helicopter. 

Waiting impatiently for her turn, Kerry overheard a young couple the next row over arguing. 

Impersonating his girlfriend's high pitched voice, the teen said, "My pussy hurts, I need some cream for it. I need it now!" He eyed the helicopter's payload, and said in his own voice, "See how it hurts with one of those rockets up it."  

His girlfriend, impersonating his much deeper voice, said, "I can't watch another chick flick. I want to see something blow up, God damn it!" In her own voice, she added, "Who's the pussy now?" 

Ms. Pierce, keeping her back to the two lovers, smirked. Then it dawned on her. Of course. They're driving each other out of their skulls. Living and breathing the same air-twenty four/seven. This might be the best chance we have to catch them off their game. 

She paid for her soda and hiked back to the helicopter. 

Sam stood by the Wasp, waiting for her. Seeing the expression on her face, he said, "You're very pleased with yourself." 

"What's that?" 

Realizing she couldn't hear him over the rotor noise of the helicopter, and knowing it wouldn't do a damn bit of good, he raised his voice. "I said, you been playing with yourself?" 

"Ah-ha," she replied absently. 

They clambered in the helicopter. 

"Someone mind telling me where we're going? I am the chief analyst of this operation," DMW said, playing with his cell phone to confirm his internet connection.  

"A house in the hills," Sam said. "A house on top of a hill, to be precise." He noticed DMW swallow spit, despite keeping a tight grip on his poker face.  

DMW lowered his eyes to his cell phone and started madly punching out a sms. He repeatedly tried to hit send. "You've blocked all outgoing messages?" 

"Just a security precaution," Sam said. "We wouldn't want anyone warning the couple we're coming for them, would we?" Sam swore he saw DMW's pale face hit a new shade of white. 

"No, no we wouldn't," DMW stammered, and lowered his eyes like a whipped teenager with his hands caught in under-aged pussy. "Maybe if I could get out. I'm feeling a little seasick. Never was much for flying." 

"Sure thing," Sam said, sliding the cockpit door open for him. 

DMW, trying his best to stifle his expression of surprise, darted out the copter and into the black Ford Taurus with its security upgrade, which included bulletproof windows and armor plated doors and undercarriage.  

The instant he was in the vehicle he noticed the doors locking on him and he couldn't open them back up. The engine wouldn't start. And four goons were surrounding the car. Milos's goons. Milos bent over the front windshield and waved at him with a dumb smile on his face. "Sorry, DMW. Didn't mean to turn on you this soon. But she looks like she's winning this, and I have to saddle my horse to the right carriage if I expect to move up in this business." 

"Even if she doesn't just suspect, even if she knows, I can fix this," DMW said, raising his voice as Milos was doing to be heard past the infernally thick bullet-proofed windshield. "I can make it look like she's aiding and abetting the criminals by tying the hands of her number one analyst. I can spin this, I tell you." 

"God, that sounds good. So long as they get away from her, I'm your man, DMW. We'll go back to being the best of friends like none of this ever happened. And I'll be sure to note I was under strict orders to detain you, thus supporting your argument. Viewed from the right perspective, I'm sure you'll agree, it's clear we're still on the same side." 

DMW just screamed and pounded the steering wheel, as the helicopter lifted off.